


starlight mine

by mnemememory



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, But mostly angst, Canon Compliant, F/F, Happy Valentine's Day!, You Have Been Warned, and fluff, character death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 17:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17791877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemememory/pseuds/mnemememory
Summary: The worst thing Yasha has ever done is not die.





	starlight mine

The worst thing Yasha has ever done is not die.

…

…

Yasha breathes in and out, in and out, in and – _keep breathing_ , she tells herself with an iron grip on her lungs. _You just need to keep breathing_.

(in and out and out and out and)

It’s hard. It’s harder than it ever has been in her whole life – harder than _anything_ has ever been in her whole life. Yasha is intimately aware of exhaustion, flirted with her physical limits since the time she was a small child. Running and jumping and chasing people, always chasing people. She’s had a sword in her hand longer than she’s recognised herself by her own name.

(“Faster,” people tell her. “You need to be faster, stronger. Better. Be the best.”

Yasha ignores them with single-minded focus, back straight and feet apart and sword sliding down, down, down. _Breathe_ , she tells herself, exhaustion leaden in her veins. _Breathe through it_ ).

Animal terror clots her throat. Yasha rushes forward and claws her way across the sticky marsh, heedless of the monsters that hiss at her passing. She’s bent over double and she’s still running, still breathing, still _living_. Yasha is alive. Yasha is alive, and Zuala is –

Zuala’s phantom fingers slide down Yasha’s face and _tug_ at her shoulders, pressing her down to the ground. Yasha stumbles and gets up. Stumbles and gets up. _Keep breathing, keep breathing, keep –_

…

…

“Do you want to know something _amazing_?”

Yasha closes her eyes and pretends to be asleep. Zuala laughs and pokes her cheek, leaning over her and sliding a hand around the back of Yasha’s neck. She’s beautiful like this, mouth sloped wide and eyes softened at the edges.

“Hey, Yasha. Wake up. I want to talk to you.”

“G’night,” Yasha says.

_“Ya-_ sha,” Zuala says. Yasha peeks up through her eyelids, and Zuala is mock-glaring down at her, hair flooding sideways to block out the thin moonlight that manages to break through the canopy. “I’m being serious. Let’s take advantage of this privacy while we have it.”

“I am taking advantage of it,” Yasha says, reaching up and pressing her thumbs along Zuala’s cheekbones. “I’m here with you, aren’t I?”

Zuala falls back with a teasing grin, hooking her hands around Yasha’s wrists and pulling her up into a sitting position. Yasha tenses her abdominal muscles and lifts herself up, placing as little strain on Zuala’s arms as possible.

Zuala smacks her lightly on the shoulder. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“You injured your arm yesterday,” Yasha says. “I am heavy. I don’t want to make it worse.”

Zuala makes a thoughtful sound, and then runs an appreciative hand across Yasha’s abs. Yasha’s eyes widen, but Zuala looks more amused than anything else. “I mean,” she says. “I don’t  _not_ appreciate the view –”

“Zuala!”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” Zuala says. She pauses. “I’m lying. I’m not kidding. Don’t put your shirt back on, please.”

Yasha rolls over and gropes around for her shirt.

 “Spoilsport,” Zuala says. “You’re no fun, you know that? Besides, don’t you want to know my secret?”

Yasha pulls the shirt over her head and gives Zuala a _look_. Zuala ignores the _look_ with practiced ease.

“Well?” she says, leaning forward so that she’s almost nose-to-nose with Yasha. “Do you want to know? It’s really special.”

“If you want to tell me,” Yasha says. “I won’t object.”

Zuala laughs again, leaning down to give her a quick kiss. Then she pulls back and says, “My secret is that I love you with everything I am,” and kisses her again.

…

…

One day, Yasha wakes up with a hole in her head.

Maybe that’s why she decided to trust Mollymauk Tealeaf, the man without memory. There’s something dazzling about the way he holds his head high and demands the world.

“There’s so much about this body that I don’t understand,” Molly says under a blanket of stars, blood welling bright and silver in the moonlight. He pulls his hand away from his savaged chest and the trickle of blood moves with him, hovering suspended in the air above his palm.

Yasha watches with her back against a tree. They’re in-between towns and had pitched camp close enough to the line of forest to keep the worst of the evening’s rain at bay. Things have lightened up considerably since then, but Yasha and Molly are still the only two – besides Bo and Ornna, who had been unlucky enough to draw watch – brave enough to venture outside.

Molly flashes her a quick, practised smile. Everything about him is artificial, from the way he talks to the way he dresses. Yasha watches him pick things up from people and use them, twist them. Every day he tries on a new accent for style, a new personality. He’s settled down somewhat, but it’s still a shock to wake up and find him different than the day before.

“I suppose that doesn’t make much sense,” he says. The blood is still in the air.

Yasha thinks about it. She stares down at her hands and thinks very hard.

“For a while,” she begins, and the words are stiff in her mouth. Everything comes unnaturally to her now, from the way she talks to the way she dresses. The circus doesn’t seem to mind her bewilderment from culture shock, but that isn’t going to last forever. Yasha is going to have to get used to this country one day, if she ever wants to meet up to the Stormlord’s expectations.

And she will. Yasha is _determined_ to do Him proud. She will not fail someone else again.

Again.

“In my other life,” she says, and it’s true for the most part. _In my other life_. Thinking about her tribe, about Zuala, it seems like a far-off dream. _That can’t have happened_. Not possible. “I was – it was very different than here. I was very different.” I was happy. I was terrified. I was in love. “But I did – something. I did something, and I can’t remember. Something bad, I think. Something very bad. And I’m still learning to – to live with that bad thing that I can’t remember.”

Molly looks unreadable in the starlight, red eyes glittering gold. Yasha can’t look at him anymore; she turns her face to the sky and wishes – so many things. Yasha has so many things to wish for. She doesn’t even know where to begin.

…

…

“Hey, make a wish.”

“What?”

Zuala grabs onto Yasha’s hand and laces their fingers together. She uses their hands to point at the sky, which is a blanket of light.

“Look up there,” she says. She’s shorter than Yasha, so she’s supporting the weight of Yasha’s forearm with her own. “That’s a shooting star. Has anyone ever told you about shooting stars?”

Yasha frowns, feeling wrongfooted. “Shooting stars?”

Zuala kisses their intertwined hands. Yasha looks around, heart leaping into her throat. There’s no one around, though – it’s just the two of them, lost on the edge of the forest with the whole wide world stretched out at their feet.

“If you see a shooting star,” she says. “You make a wish on it, and it’ll pull that wish down to earth and make it real.”

“I don’t need a wish,” Yasha says, stupidly. Everything she says is stupid. “I just want you.”

Zuala laughs, high and delighted. She reaches up to grab Yasha’s shoulders and pepper kisses across her cheeks. Yasha relaxes into it as much as she can. She can’t quite shake the feeling that she’s doing things wrong. Everything she says is wrong. Zuala doesn’t seem to mind though. That’s one of the many wonderful things about her.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I made a wish for you.”

“What did you wish for?”

Zuala grabs onto Yasha’s forearm and snuggles close. Yasha stares down at her in vague bemusement, and then tucks Zuala more comfortably at her side. _It’s just the two of us_ , she reminds herself. _We’re alone out here._

“I can’t tell you that,” she says. There’s a quiet kind of amusement to her voice, almost wistful. “Then it’ll never come true.”

Yasha thinks about it. “Does it count if I guess? Can you give me a clue?”

“If my wish comes true,” Zuala says. “You’ll be the first to know.”

…

…

_I wanted to see so many things_ , Zuala whispers through the bars of her cell. _I wanted to see a sky that wasn’t bruised, and a world that wasn’t wet. I wanted to see trees as tall as mountains. I wanted to see magic, and music, and cities. I wanted to see colours, and fireworks, and beautiful things that I could never dream for myself. I wanted to see flowers, Yasha. I’ve heard so many wonderful things about flowers._

…

…

Yasha walks away from her world with blood embedded into her nails, too deep to ever come out.

It’s a cold kind of knowledge. The comfort of it sits with hollow weight in the linings of her stomach. _They are dead_ , she thinks, and she doesn’t know if it’s grief or relief or something else that tugs at her chest.

Night turns cold – colder than she had ever expected, curled up on the side of the road in nothing but bloodstained rags. There is a fierce energy that builds tense in her throat. Lightning, she would call it, if it didn’t burn so thin. Whip marks lace her forearms, sore and scabbed. Yasha doesn’t sleep.

“I love you,” Zuala says, kneeling in front of her. Yasha closes her eyes. “You’re my wife. I’ll always love you.”

It sits on her tongue: _I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry_. Days blur. She keeps walking. _I’m so sorry_.

“It’s okay,” Zuala says. “Yasha, shh, it’s okay, I love you.”

It seems so much worse that Yasha cannot remember. The darkness spreads like infection across her memory – there is confrontation, and terror. The beginnings of sick dread. But she can’t quite place the moments, the people. Maybe she will spend forever in a haze of sweet smoke and silent, slack faces. The tribe of Dolorov stands to either side of every path she takes. There is nothing she can do for the ghosts that hang at her hips and on her back, so she straighter her shoulders and bares it.

“Orphan Maker,” the Sky Spear hisses. Yasha sees her in pale relief, bloodless and skeletal. She looks so much smaller than Yasha remembers. “Oathbreaker.”

Yasha dreams of hellfire and wakes up with her back covered in blood. She scoops up broken feathers by the armful and burns them in place of firewood.

…

…

“I would have liked to meet her,” Molly says.

“I would have liked that, too.”

…

…

Yasha is married, and this is the happiest day of her life.

Zuala tugs her close, hands gripping firm along her waist. She’s grinning wider than Yasha would have ever thought possible, drunk despite not having touched a drop of alcohol. Neither of them has. Yasha can feel it too – the energy, the excitement. _We did it. We actually went through with it._

Yasha is so _happy_.

The marriage-tattoos pull and burn across Yasha’s chest, but it’s a good kind of pain, the kind that fuels a kind of possessive need to see Zuala’s matching marks. She hasn’t seen them yet, as dictated by tradition, but she’s so excited. Yasha had never considered herself to be a greedy person before Zuala, but maybe that was because she had never had anything she could lose.

“You’re mine,” she says, leaning down to nuzzle into Zuala’s neck. Zuala laughs and kisses just underneath Yasha’s ear. “I love you, we’re married, you’re _mine_ and I’m yours and –”

“I’ve never seen you so talkative,” Zuala says, reaching down to press her hand on the space above Yasha’s heart. The swollen skin stings. Yasha leans back so she can get a proper look at Zuala’s – _her wife’s_ – face. “I should marry you more often.”

Yasha throws back her head and laughs.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! I'm not sorry <3


End file.
